


Haunted By the Dark

by Jacob_FaeWyldes



Series: Homework I posted online for no reason what so ever [8]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Horror, I Tried, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 15:39:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13080036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacob_FaeWyldes/pseuds/Jacob_FaeWyldes
Summary: I'm not scared of the dark. I'm scared of the monsters it hides behind its cloak.





	Haunted By the Dark

It was a winter night, cold enough for snow, but none fell. Midnight had long since passed, but I remained untouched by sleep, mind still wrapped up in pages of books long since finished - worlds of myth and magic and combat.

The night was inky and fathomless. It pressed in and wrapped around me in a tight suffocating embrace, swallowing any sound and choking the feeble lights out like a dying ember in a windstorm. The halls creaked with the footsteps of long-dead ghosts. Lights that stood proud and bright and strong during the day cowered behind shades and cords. Monsters would creep and crawl and slink through it. They stood in the shadows, and in the light; in the silence and in the ambient sounds of the night. 

I closed my eyes and clamped my hands over my ears. Hoping, praying for the daylight to come and erase the terrifying visages that loomed threateningly around my bed.

Just as the clock struck the Devil’s hour, strange noises filled the house. I could hear stairs creaking, doors slamming shut, and vermin scuttling in the walls and across the floor. Shadows grew and shrank like a heaving chest of a monstrous behemoth. Rain and sleet pounded on the roof and walls, rattling the windows and the doors. Thunder boomed, and lightning struck, illuminating the room in short bursts of light.

In that moment, I remembered the stories of monsters that stole children away in the night, dragging them through darkened forests or into the sea. Could mine be the next to join the legions of foreboding bedtime stories told to naughty children? Or will my parents walk into my room in the morning, only to find my bloody and broken body slathered around the room like a gory parody of a child’s finger painting?

Adrenaline flooded my system. My heart was pounding in my chest and in my ears; my hands were clammy with sweat, my breaths were short and fast and ragged with fear. My eyes darted around the room, trying to find the amorphous horrors that lay just beyond my sight, but I couldn’t focus. Tears welled up in my eyes. I could feel staring, I could hear breathing, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see…  _ something _ drooling hungrily.

But I couldn’t  _ see _ them. Every time I turned to look at one directly, it vanished.

Again I felt the eyes, again I tried to find the beast they belonged to, and again it vanished.

‘ _ Where were they!?! _ ’

My eyes darted around faster and faster and faster. The pounding on the windows and walls was like a blacksmith’s hammer upon an anvil; louder and louder, until the terrifying cacophony reached its terrible crescendo.

I was hyperventilating now, and my heart pulsated loud in my ears.

_ 'I couldn’t see them!' _

I heard doors slamming and the windows shuddering and... 

Snarling.

Growling.

Something gnashing its teeth...

...then it came out of the shadows. 

I don’t know what it was but, its flesh was raw and pasty, covered in boils, and bubbles of bloody pus seeping from cracks in the skin. Thin hair dusted its mangled body. Three of its milky bloodshot eyes pinned me in place, while numerous others spun in their sockets, flicked around the room, or rolled unseeing at nothing. Three mouths hung open, thin strings of drool connected the wide jaws. Crooked teeth sat gleaming, pale yellow and red; I could see gore and flesh caught between them, probably from its last meal. It’s rancid putrid breath turned to fog around its long jagged tusks.

The monstrous colossus hunched and limped and dragged itself toward me on short, squat legs; slobbering as its large nose inhaled the scent of tender  _ young human _ meat.

I was paralyzed, hands shaking, heart pounding, ears ringing.

The beast dragged its arms into the withering light, and I felt bile rise in the back of my throat. Tangled around is gore-stained talons were little bones tied to strings sinwe.

Human bones.

A child’s wailing joined the night’s bloodcurdling symphony.

I scrabbled away from the eldritch abomination lumbering toward me in a hopeless attempt to escape.

As the beast reached its many grotesque arms toward me, I realized the screaming was coming from me.

I closed my eyes.

I felt a terrible piercing agony.

And then…

Nothing.

My last thought was:

‘ _ So this is what it’s like to die. _ ’

  
  



End file.
